Official Languages Committee on April 1st, 2010

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

You mentioned that you'll have the results in April. Would it be possible to provide the committee with the results, that is, how many publications will receive funding and what percentage get more or less funding?

[Jean-François Bernier]

That's certainly possible.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Thank you.

[Jean-François Bernier]

We can provide the committee with it once the information is available and public.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

You also said that you fund publications that cost money rather than publications that are free, to be sure that the readership is are reading them. However, the Quebec Community Newspapers Association tells us that three anglophone residents out of five read their local community newspaper. That's a lot. It seems to me that this is assurance that the papers are being read.

As well, the QCNA writes, and I quote:

Our member publications cover communities that are often hard to reach. Whether ethnic, religious, senior, agricultural, educational, aboriginal or official language minority, our publications effectively provide non-duplicating coverage in both rural and urban markets throughout Quebec.

Is that not a good reason to fund these publications?

[Jean-François Bernier]

Are these publications? I haven't read that...

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

These publications are offered free of charge. I mention this because you say that you based your decision on the fact that people who pay for their newspapers or magazines read them more. Myself, I buy a lot of them, but unfortunately I don't have an opportunity to read them all. So that isn't necessarily true. As well, we are told that three people out of five read these magazines and publications.

[Jean-François Bernier]

The program has limited resources. Scott mentioned that we would need a 300% increase if we agreed to that. Decisions have to be made. The traditional model didn't include free publications. You say that you have an opportunity to read and you buy community newspapers or magazines. Free publications rely heavily on advertising. That is their business model. I will note your comment. We may have those figures, but I haven't checked them. We had to make a decision based on the resources we had available.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Surely there are other ways besides subscriptions to determine how popular a weekly newspaper is with its customer base.

Thank you, Ms. Zarac.

We will move on to Ms. Guay.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, gentlemen.

I think a $75.5 million budget is a substantial one. There is a dilemma, the way I see it. In my riding, there are a lot of local newspapers, and also anglophone papers. The newspapers are monthly or bi-monthly, and they are struggling. They are staffed by volunteers. These free papers don't get any funding. They have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for money, and here I'm seeing that you are actually funding newspapers that are surely very capable of surviving without your funding. I have some hesitation in that respect.

At page 4 of your document, this is under "Aid to Publishers". They have to sell a total of 5,000 copies a year, the exceptions being aboriginal, ethnocultural and official language minority newspapers. What does that mean, exactly? Explain it for me.

[Jean-François Bernier]

Scott, do you want to address that?

[Scott Shortliffe]

This is the distinction between 500,000 and 250,000 once again...

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

No, the figures are 5,000 and 500.

[Scott Shortliffe]

Yes, 5,000 copies.

Thank you, I think I need a coffee.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

We can offer you an April fool coffee, if you like.

[Scott Shortliffe]

We fund such an incredibly wide range of titles and such a large ecosystem. We fund very large magazines, which also provide the best pay rates to writers and artists, and we fund a large number of very small titles.

When we set the 5,000 copies per year, one of the reasons was that we had a summative evaluation of the PAP, our programme d'aide aux publications, a few years ago, and it said that administratively we were spending far more time and money administering small amounts of money than it was worth. My smallest recipient in PAP last year was getting, I think, $7.11 for the year.

Coming out of that evaluation and taking that into account, we set the general maximum of $5,000 a year, because lower than that, probably if it sold 5,000 copies a year, a title will probably be getting a grant of $1,000 or less. Under $2,500 a year, it will probably be getting between $500 to $600 a year. And we had roughly 300 files of this size. Taking into account the administrative burden of having another 300 files to manage and the recommendation from our independent evaluation, we decided to set a level of 5,000 copies sold per year.

We made the exception for the official language minority titles and the aboriginal and ethnocultural titles, because even if it's less than $1,000 a year, we recognize that any assistance is worthwhile. That's why we set those levels, and we also provide support through our collective initiatives through associations to try to help the smallest of the small.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

Since I don't have a lot of time, I am going to try to go quickly. We needed some clarification on that point.

If the people at Quebecor, and it is in fact Quebecor where I come from, if they make an application for national or local newspapers and say those papers will in fact by funded by your funding, what do you do to check, to make sure, that it is in fact those papers that are being funded, and not Quebecor, the upper level, that is collecting the money? There are a lot of papers published by Quebecor, all over Quebec. Do you do that kind of checking? It's actually very important. If the money stays in one place, the papers lower down are not benefiting from it.

[Jean-François Bernier]

Ms. Guay, I can assure you that checking is done, because in our view, the applicant is the publisher. It isn't Pierre Karl Péladeau writing, it's the publisher of one of the periodicals.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

L'Écho du Nord...

[Jean-François Bernier]

So I can assure you that we do our checking, with due diligence.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Steven Blaney]

Thank you, Ms. Guay.

We will continue with Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

[Member speaks in Mandarin]

It's important to remember on April 1 that Chinese is not an official language of Canada, eh?

Thank you for your information. C'était très bref. It's very clear and easy for even MPs to understand. I appreciate it very much.

I have several quick questions.

We heard earlier, either from George Bakoyannis or Shelley Robinson, that there was no specific program--I just want to make clear that we're talking about this specific program--that funds the kinds of resources they provide. You heard their testimony. Were you surprised when you heard...?

[Scott Shortliffe]

I believe that was Ms. Robinson's comment, and she was referring to community radio. Now, that's a separate branch than ours. That's broadcasting. I can't speak to whether there is a program there.

I can say that with us, we do have a specific program--collective initiatives--that funds industry associations like the QCNA, like l'APF, like Magazines Canada, specifically to provide them with support for their members and support for the development of the industry. I can't speak to whether there's such a program for community radio.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I think it was George who said that there was nearly $100,000 for francophone newspapers in the rest of Canada.

He said $100,000 to English papers in Quebec and 10 times that for francophone papers outside Quebec. I'm wondering whether you could verify that statement. He admitted that he didn't have the exact numbers, but it was a surprising fact that he stated.